Free The Electrical Field by Kerri Sakamoto Page B

needlessly agitated or excited. I glimpsed Yano heading down the length of the electrical field instead of across it, back to his house.
    “New neighbour,” I said, plumping up the cushion behind his weakening back. “Yano-san.”
    “Nihonjin?” he exclaimed. For what were the chances of three Japanese families settling in one small neighbourhood? I went to point out their house but realized I’d already shut the drapes. I explained that he lived with his wife and two small children in the house across the field. Papa grew excited then, and struggled up on his frail legs, but fell back. He struggled again. I could make out the outline of his legs, the jut of bones through the worn fabric of his trousers. I suppose he was hoping to make new friends. At his age. Whatever his ideas, I thought it best not to encourage them, and to keep him calm.
    “Sit, Papa.” I gently pushed him down. “Gone now.”
    “Gone?”
    “Gone.”
    That would be the sum of one afternoon’s conversation between us. Not much less than now. Back then it worried me, spending all of my time alone with only Papa and his ragged bits of English. I was reading books, books of allkinds, on all topics under the sun, one after another from the shelves of our little local library. I went through the newspaper with my dictionary every day, and began filling in the crossword puzzles to put myself to the test. I wanted to better myself. I was petrified, in spite of the progress I was making, of sliding back. In the beginning, watching me, Stum was often silent and sullen, retreating to his room.
    After a time, the two of them began to tiptoe around me whenever I was reading, filling in my crossword, or sorting out my word jumble. Often they left the newspaper folded in quarters to that page for me. They saw me differently in those days, I suppose. Different from them, poring over my precious words every day.
    Yano talked like the rest of them, and in many ways he seemed cruder, rougher. When he later told me that he’d worked on a road crew during the war, I wasn’t a bit surprised.
    One morning several weeks after his brief visit to our door, he intercepted me on my early morning walk.
    “Saito-san!” His deep voice, commanding really, reached me through the faint hum of traffic from the distant highway. I glanced back without breaking my stride. I heard the trudge of his boots crack the surface of snow glazed from freezing rain early that morning. Suddenly he was at my side, out of breath, and a single bead of sweat rolled down his temple, odd in the dead of winter.
    “Sure walk fast,” he announced, smiling a broad, fleeting smile.
    I eyed his jacket, its flimsy fabric, as he unzipped it. “Careful you don’t catch cold,” I said.
    “I’m cold-blooded, just like the reptiles. Never get sick.”Then, as if to prove it, he took off his jacket as we walked and proceeded to roll up his shirt-sleeves.
    We walked on, the towers looming ahead, marking my halfway point. Birds were swarming in the grey sky above us. I was about to say something about the possibility of more freezing rain when I heard Yano’s voice lagging behind me once again, fainter this time. I turned back to find him stooped, one hand spread across his chest where his shirt opened. As I came closer, I heard his breath wheezing in and out, a rope straining through a narrow loop.
    “What is it, Yano-san?” I was little help standing there in the middle of the field as he choked. He peered up at me through suddenly bloodshot, watering eyes, and pointed to his back. He’d dropped his jacket in the snow and I bent to pick it up.
    “Please,” he sputtered. “Chotto,” and he pointed to his back, making a gesture for me to rub it. He had the strength to snatch the jacket from me with one hand, and threw it back to the ground. “Hard, like this, ne?” He showed me again as he gasped for air. I rubbed the heel of my palm over his back, behind his lungs, but my hand kept slipping.